


The STOC

by MusicalLuna



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Astronomy, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Science, Science Bros, Systems of Laboratory Governance, Tony Can Be an Ass But He Means Well, Vague and Still Probably Inaccurate Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-09-19 04:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9417605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna
Summary: Bad scientists go to the STOC.





	

**Author's Note:**

> birthday fic for my netbooks’ favourite godmom <3
> 
> happy birthday, sweets

“Bruce, look at this,” Jane says, frowning at the charts suspended in the air in front of her.

These readings don’t make any sense. She flicks through them with light gestures, but they don’t change.

“What have you got?” Bruce eases up beside her, sliding his hands into his pockets where she knows he keeps twists of paper and other assorted small objects he uses to help let off steam in a controlled manner.

“Is there an anomaly?” Tony calls from the corner. “Is there an anomaly, just like I said there’d be?”

“Shh!” Jane chastises. “No talking from the science time out corner!”

Tony whines. “Oh, come on, it’s been like twenty minutes!”

“Not true, Sir,” JARVIS interjects, “it has only been sixteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.”

“You’re a traitor, JARVIS, and I’m having you dismantled and the scrap donated to Dell.”

“You know the rules, Tony,” Bruce murmurs, leaning forward to stare more intently at the graphs.

There’s really only one rule: stay in the science time out corner until you’re voted out by lab majority, or forfeit lab privileges for twenty-four hours."

In a surprise twist (that surprises no one), Tony is the one most frequently sent to the section of the lab Jane and Bruce have set aside for the Science Time Out Corner.

Which is funny actually, because it had been meant to serve as a time out for when they got too absorbed in what they were doing and forgot to, you know, eat, or drink, or sleep—tedious things like that. There’s a little cot and a table—Tony is currently sitting on the table, with DUM-E and U standing guard, their arms crossed to block him from getting off the table and rejoining them in front of the displays—and a mini-fridge stocked with protein fruit drinks and water bottles and snack packs of apple slices and carrots and celery and things like that. There’s a cabinet overhead crammed full of dry snacks and, on the top shelf, assorted cookies and other sweets.

That’s not to say that Tony isn’t sent to the time out corner to refuel—he often is. But Tony had been the first one to receive a time out for bad behavior.

He’d gotten unbearably smug, lording his superior knowledge of electronics (like that’s anything to brag about, she’s reconstructed a bridge to another _dimension)_ over them, and Bruce had been having a particularly bad day, so when he’d growled, “ _Science time out_.” Tony had shut his mouth and gone to the corner because whatever everyone thinks, he _does_ actually seem to have some sort of self-preservation instinct, or maybe she’s interpreting his comrade-preservation instinct as self-preservation, but whatever. Point is, he’d gone and sat quietly for the better part of an hour, side-eyeing Bruce and tinkering with the toaster and cramming his mouth full of dried mangos.

When Bruce had finally said, quietly, “I vote to release Tony from the science time out corner,” Jane had nodded and agreed and then before Tony could get past the tape borderline had flung up a hand and said, “Ah! Do you recognize that you were sent to the science time out corner for being a dick?”

Tony had grimaced and said, “I can see why someone might interpret it that way, so, yeah, sure, I guess I—”

Glaring, Jane had repeated, “ _Do you recognize that you were being a dick?_ ”

She’d gotten a mulish glare in response and Tony had glanced at Bruce, but there had been no support to find. He’d rubbed at his forehead with a knuckle and said sharply, “Yeah, okay, I was a dick, I get it. I’m done being five-years-old, vote me out.”

“Okay,” Jane had said serenely. “I second the vote to release Tony from the science time out corner.”

“That makes three votes. Sir, you are released.”

“What the hell,” Tony had complained. “ _JARVIS_ gets a vote?”

Now, Jane watches Bruce’s face as he scrutinizes the results and feels a perverse kind of glee when his expression pinches. “Wait. These readings don’t make sense.”

“Right?!” Jane exclaims. “Darcy asked me if I had them upside down, but I know how to read these findings.”

“I can read them upside down!” Tony calls.

“No talking!” both she and Bruce reply without even looking away from the display.

“Yeah…this doesn’t make sense at all,” Bruce says. He brings up the simulated region of space and circles the spot they’re talking about with a finger. “These readings are saying the gamma rays are diverting around what appears to be a red dwarf, but there isn’t a red dwarf in this region of space.”

“Anomaly!” Tony yells.

“An additional twenty minutes have been added to your sentence, Sir,” JARVIS announces and Jane says, “Thank you, JARVIS.” Tony makes a noise of outrage.

“Oh, come on!”

“Would you like to make it a further twenty, Sir?” JARVIS asks.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane sees Tony scowlingly flipping JARVIS the bird, but he turns and swivels onto his knees so he can bang around in the snack cabinet. Bruce catches her eye and smiles, small and fleeting. “Is the map we have of this region accurate and up-to-date, JARVIS?” he asks.

“Indeed, Doctor Banner.”

“Hmm,” he says. They work in silence for another ten minutes, trying to figure what the _hell_ is causing the—ugh—anomaly. It _can’t_ be a literal anomaly. It can’t. Except she’s learned her lesson where “can't” is concerned.

Bruce is frowning at the model when Jane spots something that makes her go, “Wait. Waaaait.”

Bruce looks over at her.

She starts flipping through files, skimming through the notes they’ve been assembling. When she finds it, she jabs a finger at it, and it enlarges to ten times the normal size. “Aha!” she says.

Bruce looks at it and then says, “Oh my god. Oh my _god._ ” He puts his face in one hand. “Our math was off.”

“Our math was off!” she says and pumps her fist. She spins on her heel, pointing at Tony with both hands, and crows, “In your face, _anomaly_.”

Tony rolls his eyes from his cross-legged position on the time-out table and says, “Yeah, yeah, okay, leave the space science to the space nerds. I prostrate myself before your brains, whatever. Can I come out and play now?”

“Well, that was 86%,” Bruce says to her, “that’s not terrible for him.”

“Ha ha,” Tony says, dry as dust, leaning towards them. Then he whines, “Come on, you figured it out. I was wrong, I’m a douche, I gave you 86% of a semi-apology, let me do the math, you know I’m good for it!”

“Yeah, okay,” Bruce says and he’s smiling. “I vote to release Tony from the science time out corner.”

Jane sighs dramatically, but she’s smiling, too, when she says, “Yeah, yeah, I vote to release him, let’s do _science_ , bitches!”

Bruce laughs and Tony tries to hide his smile and fails.

“Against my better judgement, I release you, Sir,” JARVIS says.

Tony saunters ever-so _casually_ over to join them. “Banana?” he offers, swinging the bag between the two of them.

“Thanks,” Bruce says, taking a few. Jane wrinkles her nose.

She pats his shoulder though, and gets a quizzical look for her trouble. “I know you just want to help, Tony, but we don’t need you to have the right answer every time.”

Tony has the grace to come very close to blushing.

“Noted.”


End file.
